1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character input device and a character input program that can display character input information with a relatively small area in a display screen without hindering a user from viewing other information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, in an online game such as an MMORPG, a player can implement a game by matching against an enemy character or moving on a field while chatting with other players. When the player chats in the online game, characters are input by connecting a keyboard to a game apparatus or by using a software keyboard where a keyboard is displayed on a display screen and characters are input by operating buttons. However, when there are a large number of object characters to be input, a software keyboard 53 displayed on a display screen 24 needs to be large, as illustrated in FIG. 8, in order to prevent occurrence of a situation where a button to select each character is displayed in a small size and thus it becomes difficult for a user to discriminate the button. As a result, the software keyboard 53 is displayed to overlap a game character 60 such as a player character or a non-player character and it becomes difficult for the user to view a game implementation situation such as an operation of each game character or various kinds of information such as a parameter regarding the game implementation situation.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 1997-73353 discloses a technique for reducing an area of the software keyboard displayed on the screen and enabling the entire screen to be easily viewed by a user even when the screen is small so that the technique can be employed in a portable information terminal or the like having a relatively small display screen. According to the technique, a software keyboard for displaying Japanese syllabary (50 sillabary) is displayed in only one sound line such as “A” series or “I” series.
However, according to the technique disclosed in JP-A No. 1997-73353, it is difficult to reduce the area of the software keyboard displayed within the display screen up to the desired size. Furthermore, when there are a lot of character types such as hiragana, katakana, English character, and numeral/sign, it is bothersome for the user to select a desired character.